Month: January 2017

I am used to watching Pink- footed Geese under huge Norfolk skies where some of them spend the winter. I see them every autumn in high flying ‘tick’ shaped skeins as they navigate their way down the East coast, fresh from their Icelandic breeding grounds. But last evening, creatively held back by two days of constant low cloud and drizzle, I heard pinkfeet from the comfort of the lounge. I ran outside and in the drizzly, still air it sounded as if they were about to alight in the garden. They were so low I could hear individual geese shaking the moisture off their plumage. There was a roar of displaced air as flocks, unseen, passed low overhead, seemingly disorientated and flying in different directions. The noise started at about 6.30pm and continued long enough to lull me to sleep around 11pm. All the while that magical call reminded me of days sketching with numb fingers in a Norfolk winter.
As the evening went on friends contacted me to tell of similar experiences in nearby Stonegrave, Wombleton, Kirbymoorside and Helmsley. So where were the geese going? It seems that a large movement of pinkfeet, perhaps from the Humber estuary or Norfolk, were starting to make their way North towards their breeding grounds in Iceland. But why so many hundreds if not thousands of birds found themselves disorientated over such a wide area is a mystery.